I'm a geochemist. In the past ten years I've fixed mass spectrometers, blasted sapphires with a laser beam, explored for uranium in a nature reserve, and measured growth patterns in fish ears, and helped design the next generation of the world's most advanced ion probe. My main interest is in-situ mass spectrometry, but I have a soft spot in my heart for thermodynamics, drillers, and cosmochemistry.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

It has been interesting to see the nucleation, aggregation,
and subsequent metamorphism of the science blogosphere over the past 7 years.
In general, I suspect that it has been good for science education, and there
has been a concerted effort by many to reach out to women, atheists, and
minorities who generally have more trouble leading successful scientific
careers in the white English speaking world.
This is good, although the fact that this outreach has intensified after
the deprofessionalization of science makes it a less effective tool for lifting
people out of poverty.

There is one group, however, that has by-and-large been
excluded from the recent wave of on-line science educators, commentators, and
promoters. The are conservatives. There are very few outreach programs aimed at
making science interesting and accessible to conservatives in English speaking
countries.

Back in the good old days of the cold war, this was not a
problem. The great mass of conservative
scientists and engineers who designed and built the weapons of the cold war
know that science and technology were crucial to beating the Soviets, so there
was no need to reach out to them. But
times have changed. Military engineers
no longer keep California
a reliably Republican state, the cold war is long over, and the prominent,
respectable suburban private research parks of the 20th century have
mostly closed their doors.

Why does this matter?
Because conservatives are numerous and influential. In the white English speaking world, they
control the House of Representatives in the USA,
and the Canadian, British, Australian, and New Zealand governments. The flight of scientific research out of the
suburbs and into universities has had the effect of alienating scientists from
conservatives, and vice versa. This is
not good for either group.

Conservative who don’t have access to sound scientific
advice are likely to make policy mistakes.
At the same time, Scientists who engage conservative in an adversarial
manner are less likely to be funded by these governments. So it is in everyone’s interest to stop
taking cheap shots at each other and find a way of effectively communicating.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Happy Martin Luther King Day. Dr. King, of course, was a pivotal leader of
the civil rights movement, and was crucial in organizing African Americans to
claim their rightful places in American society. And while the civil rights struggle has
continued in the decades after his untimely death at age 39, the progress of
integration in geological sciences has been slower than in other areas. So it seems that today is as good a day as
any to discuss some of the potential barriers to racial integration in geology.

One little known problem is the issue of Mapping While
Black. Most people know what driving while black is, but a Google search for “Mapping while Black” reveals a bit
less information. However, in many parts
of the world, including the US and Australia, rural land owners often
have a tendency to be whiter, more racist and better armed than the urban
population. And this can put black field
geologists into uncomfortable positions which their white colleagues never even
conceive of.

While I am not black, and did not experience any such events
as an undergrad in the USA,
my PhD research brought me to Brazil,
where I collaborated with predominately African-Brazilian colleagues. And
while the most memorable event we had was not actually mapping, it does serve
to illustrate the hairy end of what can happen if one tries to do geology with
(or in the company of those with) low albedo skin.

My PhD research focused on an obscure type of diamond called
carbonado. Carbonado is found primarily
in East-central Brazil and the Central African
Republic, but a month after my PhD started the fall of
Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zaire
destabilized the CAR, making it off limits to my project. So Brazil
it was, chiefly the poor, black eastern part of Bahia
state known as the “Chapada diamantina” (diamond plateau).

One of the elder statesmen of the (small) field of carbonado
research suggested to me, at beers in a conference, to drop in on a man called
“Oswaldo”, who owned a saloon in the town of Lençios. Oswaldo was a mid-level diamond
trader; someone who bought raw stones off of garimpeiros, and then up sold the
better material into exporters for cutting, while retaining the weird stuff in
his collection. I was interested in the
weird stuff.

So, after three days of field work with and dealing directly
with the local garimpeiros, in we went to Oswaldo’s. Me, the very white foreign guy, a black
Brazilian geologist, and our black Brazilian driver. We sit down at a table. A waiter comes over. We say we would like to talk to Oswaldo about
diamonds. No Oswaldo appears. Our driver starts looking nervous. “blah blah
something something vamos,” says the driver. (I only had about 5 months
Portuguese lessons before the field work, and they didn’t include the Bahian
dialect or accent).

My geologist colleague say to me, “we have to go now.” And
gesture towards the rest of the room as he gets up. Three of the four exits to the room are now
blocked by tough looking Brazilian roughnecks. My memory is blurry, but I think one of them has a gun. The people
at the table next to us start to move away.
And then everything was a blur, until I was in the cab of our truck and
we were gunning the engine to get the fuck outta there. As we do, there is a
yelp. A dog (Oswaldo’s we were never properly introduced, so I can’t
say) had crawled under the ute to get out of the harsh November sun, and we had
clipped its leg tearing up the street. I
feel bad about the dog, but we lived with that, and didn’t stop. In fact, we didn’t stop until we were over
the mountains, and then we hid the truck at a roadhouse where my colleague knew
the patrons, and watched for pursuit for 20 minutes, before turning north and
heading for Morro do Chapeu, 200 km away.

Years later, I related this story to the guy who recommended
Oswaldo to me. He, a gruff, no-nonsense senior professor, was shocked, and
appalled. He and his (white) Brazilian colleagues had been treated very
generously by Oswaldo. And it never even
occurred to him that anything different would happen to us.

And therein lies the problem. There isn’t much on the internet about this
phenomena. Many white geologists simply
have no idea that you can get a gun pulled on you in the pursuit of knowledge
simply by having the wrong skin tint. If
the field of geology wants to integrate at the speed of the rest of our society,
we need to think of tactful and effective ways of identifying, discussing, and
solving the extra hurdles raised by mapping while black.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Hope Jahren, the stable isotope guru who studies everything from Paleogene ecosystems to french fries, now has a blog. This is, as far as I know, the first time a scientist who I know from the literature (and have cited) has started blogging. I'm still busy building mass spectrometers and juggling kids, so don't expect too much here.

Disclaimer:

All opinions, measurements, figures, and facts on this page are the personal opinions of Charles W. Magee, Jr, and do not represent the views of any of his employers: past, present, present-but-about-to-be-past, or future. None of the content herein has been subject to peer review, and should be treated with caution or derision. Any passing mention of OSHA code violations, criminal activities, unethical or unscientific behavior, or the clandestine Australian nuclear weapons program are fictions created to make rhetorical points, and do not represent the reality of my, or anyone else's, workplace. Do not attempt any scientific protocols described herein at home, with the exception of the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Do not apply the products of that protocol to individuals with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol, egg, wheat, dairy, or chocolate allergies. Do not view this blog continuously for more than 45 minutes without stretching and taking other precautions to prevent computer-related chronic injury.
email labhampster@gmail.com, but replace hampster with the arctic rodent after which this blog is named.